It’s difficult to know quite which is the least enticing prospect; that of the government setting up its own ‘Ministry of Propaganda’ to promote ‘British values’ to the Muslim community as part of ‘The War Against Terror’ (T.W.A.T) - I know, altogether now, ‘whaddya mean ’setting up’? - or that of putting Dr Demento in charge of compling the ’script of British values’ that they intend to use.

(Incidentally, the Dr Demento ‘you know what’ I’ve been running for a few months has successfully pushed his biography page on the Downing Street website up to third in the rankings on a search of UK webpages.)

If you’ve read of my previous articles on the subject of ‘Britishness’ then you’ll know that I tend to view the efforts made by politicians, of all parties, to arrive at a precise definition of ‘British values’ with all the disdain and contempt that the practice deserves.

It is, without any shadow of a doubt, a source of great personal satisfaction that such a definition remains, today, as elusive and intractable a proposition as it was back when John Major was maundering on about warm beer and cricket on the village green - not that I harbour any great dislike for either - and Norman Tebbit was suggesting his infamous ‘cricket test’. As to why I should feel that way, this is perhaps best answered not in terms of a discussion of the difficulty one naturally faces in trying to define precise what it is to be British, but rather in terms of why it is best that no such official definition of Britishness should ever be arrived at by government, or accepted by the British people.

The first and most practical reason is simple enough. Whenever politicians attempt to define what is to be British in terms of values or character traits, the list they produce invariably ends up being so generic that one can hardly consider anything on the list to be defineably British at all. According to the Independent, Dr Demento’s draft ’script’ of British values includes “respect for the law”, “freedom of speech”, “equality of opportunity” and “taking responsibility for others”, none of which are uniquely British - on the basis of such a list one could just as easily be taking about America, France, Germany or any other modern Western democracy - nor do any of the items on this list say anything at all about the ‘British attitude’ towards these values and how this might differ from attitudes towards the same values in other countries.

Yes, in Britain, we value freedom of speech, but the manner in which we both regard and exercise that freedom is markedly different to that one would find in the US, where it not only valued but subject to express constitutional protection. To say simply that freedom of speech is a ‘British’ value is largely meaningless, such ‘universal’ (as in generic) values neither exist nor operate in isolation from their cultural context - what make freedom of speech ‘British’ is not simply that its valued in British society but also the manner in which it is exercised in the context of British culture; for example the British approach to free expression often exhibits rather more self-restraint and even self-censorship than one would ever find in the US, although this is certainly changing, not least in terms of free speech as practiced by bloggers.

Second, and more importantly, whenever the state involves itself in efforts to define the national ‘character’, as in this case, it will inevitably place the greatest emphasis on those characteristics, traits and values that are perceived to be most supportive of its own interests.

Notice that the first item on Dr Demento’s list is ‘respect for the law’, which could, indeed, be thought part of the British ‘character’ - but only within finite limits. If one looks at British history, turbulent as it has been, then it becomes obvious that a quality such as respect for the law only goes so far with the British people. It is not the absolute principle that one suspects the government would like it to be, and certainly like to present it as; this being because there is another ‘British’ trait; a keen sense of justice (and injustice) that is both seen as having greater value and as applying limits to the extent to which one might reasonably be to treat the law with respected. In short, British people will respect the law only is so far as they perceive it to be just, fair and equitable; and if it not seen to embody those qualities then not only with they not respect the law but, in many cases, they will have no compunction about defying that law open, as was certainly the case in regards to the Poll Tax (on both occasions such a tax was introduced).

The tension that exists between a state-sanctioned definition of ‘Britishness’ and British values and that espoused by the British people is to be found nowhere more keenly than in the ongoing debate around civil liberties, in which the government has, in recent years, consistantly sought to de-emphasise the importance and value of Britain’s strong civil liberties tradition and, by extension, its history and deep-seated culture of liberal individualism, in favour of its own preferred values, which emphasise collective responsibilities and security of individual liberty.

That the government’s efforts in this area have met such stern and unyielding resistance from across the whole political spectrum stands as proof both of the extent to which Britain has such a strong tradition of liberal individualism and that it is a value that is seen by many British people as one that is part of our ‘national character’, much as one suspect the government wishes it wasn’t in anything like the same degree.

This leads neatly to the third, and perhaps, most important reason why the efforts of the government to define ‘Britishness’ British values to its own specifications should be resisted at every possible turn.

In the absence of a clear, and state-sanctioned, definition of what it is to be British, it is impossible to say definitively what is, or may be, ‘un-British.

If the importance of that last statement is not immediately apparent then one need only review the history of the United States of America during the mid-1950s and the activities of Senator Joseph McCarthy and the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HCUA) - of which, despite popular myth, McCarthy was never a member, and which was only finally dispensed with in 1975 - to see how rapidly and easily even a liberal democracy can descend rapidly into paranoia and political persecution and lose sight of those values which it is supposed to protect.

The absence, in Britain, of a clearly delimited and universally accepted, not to mention state-sanctioned, definition of ‘Britishness’ serves as a bulwark against the very excesses that, for time during the 1950’s, enabled a paranoid and delusional man to bring the US Congress into disrepute, let alone that it also permitted the HCUA to implement a blacklist of ‘Hollywood’ performers, artist and writers that included such notable cultural figures as Leonard Bernstein, Arthur Miller and Orson Wells and is all the more important for the fact that Britain lacks a written and codified consitution to curb the excesses of the British government, should one ever take a turn in just such a direction.

The British identity, such as it can be said to exist, has worked and, to my mind, continues to work effectively precisely because of the absence of a clear definition of precisely what it is or might be. This, in turn, encourages migrant communities to discover within themselves their own sense of what to actually means to be British. In that, it offers both a beautifully utilitarian - and one might say uniquely British - solution to the question of national identity, one which flexes and adapts to fit the changing character of the British people rather than seeks to place them in a cultural straitjacket that demands conformity.

To become British, one simply needs to find one’s sense of Britishness within oneself and not conform to the values and expectations of others, a solution that is, in all respects, consistent with the traditions of liberal individualism that the present government are seeking to do away with.

Much as I’ve got a lot of time, personally, for Tom Watson and know enough about both the Yew Tree and Tamebridge area and the work of its Resident’s Association to be sure that good cause he’s currently promoting on his website is worthy of support, nevertheless I cannot for the life of me follow his suggestion.

13.11.2006: Healthy living from tacky TV?

Most readers of this blog will not have heard of the Yew Tree and Tamebridge Estates Residents Association but might be able to help them all the same. The residents that work week in, week out, to hold the neighbourhood of the Yew Tree and Tamebridge together are involved in a competition for lottery funding that requires people to vote in a television poll. They want to build a healthy living cafe but they need to win the ITV People’s Millions competition.

Putting aside my slight reservations about X-factor style competitions for lottery cash, will you help them? Local residents want to construct a healthy eating cafe that gives nutritional advice and support to old and young alike. To register your vote please call 0870 243 3601 or text CENTRAL 1 to 63330.

Its not just a matter of sharing Tom’s reservations about the manner in which this money is being distributed, it more that I notice that to vote one has to call either national rate telephone number or send a text message, and yet nowhere, so far as I can see, does either ITV’s website or that of the Big Lottery Fund or, indeed, any of the supporting documentation state;

a) what it actually costs to register your vote (presumably this will appear on screen if one watches the programme), or

b) where this money actually goes (my best guess being that complete lack of such information suggests that the majority, if not all of it, goes to BT, for providing the phone lines, and ITV and the show’s production company)

So, if my thinking is correct, if you do want a say in how lottery money is being spent then it very likely means paying both BT and ITV for the privilege.

Sorry, no thanks.

Ordinarily I’m a great supporter of dear old Auntie Beeb and not one to be overly concerned by the near routine complaints of bias that it faces from all directions. As I see it, if the Beeb succeeds in drawing such complaints from all directions in roughly equal measure then its getting things about right, as by far the majority of complaints of BBC bias seem, to me at least, to be about the Beeb’s failure to unthinkingly buy into the personal biases and prejuduces of the complaintant than evidence of any genuine bias on the Beeb’s part.

This morning, however, I felt compelled to shoot off a quick e-mail to the BBC Breakfast studio - don’t know if it got a mention as this was just before leaving for work - regarding a puff-piece segment about the Archbishop of York’s weekend whinge that ‘illiberal atheists were undermining Britain’s religious heritage’, to which the Beeb chose to respond by conducting a staged discussion between a Christian minister, on one side, and perfectly aimable but otherwise wholly uninteresting representation of the Federation of Islamic Student Societies on the other.

Not unsurprisingly the entire discussion went something along the lines of:

Christian: Blah, blah, blah… agree with everything the Archbish said (of course)…

Muslim: Blah, blah, blah… Actually I quite like Christmas… Blah, blah, agree with the Christian.

And all topped off with Dermot Murnaghan wittering on about Christianity being the ‘dominant’ religion in Britain and how the Queen is the head of the church.

Yawn…

If we strip away some of outright rubbish from Sentamu’s comments - the Royal Mail, for example, aren’t trying to purge Christmas of its Christian message by using non-religious imagery on this year’s Christmas stamps, it is, in fact, standard practice for them to do a religious inspired collection one year and a Santa and Christmas trees type one the next; this year just happens to be the Santa year - then it doesn’t take much careful thought to figure out exactly what his real problem is.

To borrow a line from Corporal Jones of Dad’s Army, the issue here is nothing more that the fact that ‘they don’t like it up ‘em’.

What’s getting up the collective noses of church leaders is not that the value of religious faith has been challenged by ‘public intellectuals’ like Richard Dawkins and AC Grayling but that the challenge has been conducted in a broadly polemical fashion that fails to treat the church (and religion) with the deference to which it believes itself to be entitled and by means of which it clings on to a largely unmerited and unjutifiable position of privilege in public life.

What both Dawkins and Grayling, in particular, have done is not simply challenge religion, itself - but, more importantly, challenge its privileges by seeking to redefine the parameters of the debate surrounding religious ‘tolerance’.

In the opinion of the church, religious tolerance means not just that society should respect the right of believers to profess a particular set of beliefs but that we should also respect those beliefs in their own right; in fact the church seems to consider this almost a societal obligation. It is no such thing.

It is perfectly possible to tolerate the rights of an individual or group to profess a particular set of beliefs, even if one considers those beliefs to be ill-founded and irrational or even odious and reprehensible, and all without, in turn, being illiberal in ones views. Such is the position of many if not most people, already, in relation to the presence of far-right political parties, such as the BNP. Their existence is tolerated (i.e. they are neither banned nor prohibited from participating freely in the democratic process) and their right to freely express their views is upheld, provided they comport themselves within the law.

However, few but their own supporters would suggest that they are also entitled to respect for the values they espouse, or that such values should not be subject to attack by those who despise such vlaues; and this is all considered perfectly permissible and passes largely without comment. Indeed who, but the BNP and their supporters, would ever think it illiberal to attack, verbally or in print, the values of the far-right or demand that such values should be respected.

And yet respect for their beliefs - irrespective of whether one accepts or agrees with them - and not just their right to hold such beliefs is precisely what the Anglican and other churches (and, indeed, religion generally) expects, if not demands, of wider society. And not just respect but deference; unquestioning and uncritical acceptance that the supposed supernatural origins of such beliefs affords religion, and religious insititutions, the right to occupy a privileged position in society whether one accepts those beliefs or not.
When church leaders, such as John Sentamu, begin to talk in terms of Britain’s ‘religious heritage’ being ‘undermined’, what they are actually referring to is nothing more than their own privileged status in society; a status that they do not wish to see questioned or subjected to open public debate for the simple reason that few of those privileges would stand up to scrutiny the in face of such a debate.

One of the things that Sentamu bemoans, for example, is the fact of government officials issuing Christmas cards that carry the legend ’season greetings’. This he sees as completely ignoring the Christian message of Christmas. Nowhere does he suggest, however, why it is that we should expect government officials, as representatives of a secular organisation - the state - to actively promote Christianity and a Christian ‘message’ irrespective of whether, as individuals, they either believe in that message or wish to promote it, personally. He merely assumes that this is a privilege to which the Church is entitled by virtue of historical privilege, regardless of whether such privileges are in any way merited in modern society.
Christianty, and the Church, is in no way entitled to such privileges, nor, indeed is it entitled to expect the Royal Mail to produce religious-themed stamps at Christmas or even produce a special set of stamps (religious or otherwise) to mark Christmas at all. That the Royal Mail does so is due, no doubt in part, to its having established a popular tradition in which it does produce ‘Christmas stamps’, but the real value to the Royal Mail of such an issue lies not in the message it conveys, if any, but in its popularity and, therefore, profitability. If the production of such stamps were not profitable then commerical considerations would take over and the practice would come to an end, its as simple as that.

If there is a lesson to drawn from the relatively recent shift in the tone of the public debate surrounding the position and status of religion in society toward a more querulous and, in the case of the contribution of Richard Dawkins, polemical direction it is only that the Church can dish it out but not take it in return. The Anglican and Roman Catholic Churches, in particular, have been quite content to sit on the sidelines while fundamentalist Christians have launched wave after wave of polemical assaults on secular society, liberalism and atheism for at least the last twenty years and more; and yet no soon as secularist and atheists begin to answer back with a few uncomfortable truths of their own, they immediate cry foul and claim that we’re the ones behaving in an illiberal fashion.

This is simple hypocrisy.

When polemical attacks are launched, which take the form of evangelical believers blaming liberalism and liberal values for all the ills of society and when those same believers go one to seek to undermine the teaching of science by the active promotion of unscientific nonsense, such as the so-called ‘theory of intelligent design’, the Church and its established hierarchy is quite content to sit back and watch the action from the sidelines, if not join in the fun.

Put the shoe on the other foot, however, and their attitude is entirely different. Such ‘attacks’ are unfair and, all of sudden, the Church is, its own opinion, being victimised by the malign forces of secularism, liberalism and atheism. The reality, is however, very different from that which the Church would have you believe; it is no victim in this, rather it is the schoolyard bully who turns tail and runs crying to mummy (well, daddy, actually) no soon as its one time victim plucks up the courage to stand up to it have give back as it gets.

Getting back to the Beeb, which is where I started out, what bothered me about this morning’s puff piece was not so much that it was biased but that given the opportunity for an interesting and lively debate around Sentamu’s comment about ‘illiberal atheists’ it chose, instead, to retreat into full ‘pillar of the establishment’ mode and make the whole piece as unthreatening and uncontroversial as humanly possible, right down to the inclusion of the nice, moderate, Muslim woman who likes Christmas.

The result was a ‘discussion’ segment that not only lacked balance but which afforded the Church (and religion, generally) precisely the kind of undeserved deferential (in fact rather obsequious) treatment it is actively seeking to defend - all of which misses, entirely, the whole point of this debate.